it's not well studied, and getting together large enough numbers of people to test with is challenging. Even more challenging is producing tasks to test people with that are actually somehow related to human movement in very day life, which is why in our lab we're building a variety of video games to try and tackle that challenge.

Bizarre excuse, Scientists have their ways of getting together large number of people for clinical trials (and physiotherapy trials).

Ok maybe sport movements trials is not as important as medicine trials but if you include the neurological study benefits maybe it would be as important.

Good insight though

After reading this good conversation I just can't help but to post another video. Instinct:

Really really hilariously funny, good he didn't hit the blue post though, he instinctively avoided it. (guess this time instinct was used correctly)

Kicking a ball is performing the exact same task, it doesn't matter what distance the ball is at you will have done the kick thousands of times before and you will already have learned to judge distance.

I wasn't referring to kicking the ball. I was referring to running towards it from X distance and subconsciously adjusting your stride to ensure your foot is in the right place.

Kicking a ball is performing the exact same task, it doesn't matter what distance the ball is at you will have done the kick thousands of times before and you will already have learned to judge distance.

I wasn't referring to kicking the ball. I was referring to running towards it from X distance and subconsciously adjusting your stride to ensure your foot is in the right place.

I don't know how other people do it, but I use a mental model of the world to predict and simulate where my next dozen-or-so steps will land when hiking, going up stairs, stopping at a specific spot, or kicking a ball. If my mental simulation says my feet won't line up with the ball, I adjust my gait until it does. Some of the processing occurs ahead of time, planning the sequence of actions necessary to accomplish the goal. Some of it occurs in real time since a mental model is always an approximation and you constantly have to error-correct (and potentially handle a changing environment, such as someone else kicking the ball before you can).

The actions I know how to perform (moving my legs in various ways, keeping balance, accelerating and decelerating, kicking) are incorporated in my mental simulation. Things I haven't learned how to do, I can't mentally model. Things I have, I can. But I can always try out new motions until I find ones that are useful, and incorporate those into my modeling/simulation system.

I can also observe other people performing actions and attempt to mimic those actions.

If my mental simulation says my feet won't line up with the ball, I adjust my gait until it does. Some of the processing occurs ahead of time, planning the sequence of actions necessary to accomplish the goal. Some of it occurs in real time since a mental model is always an approximation and you constantly have to error-correct (and potentially handle a changing environment, such as someone else kicking the ball before you can).

I have no idea of how to do that. Then again, I have Asperger's and we're renowned for our poor ability at controlling our bodies. I've lost count of the number of bones I've broken and times I've need stitches due to walking/running/cycling into things that I was trying to avoid.

I can also observe other people performing actions and attempt to mimic those actions.

That's another thing I can't do. I also have almost no perception of where my body parts are. If you ask me to close my eyes and place a finger on a specific part of my body, nine times out of ten, I will fail.

Needless to say, I suck at pretty much anything that requires a modicum of co-ordination. Case in point - I've been using a keyboard almost every day for the last 30+ years and I still can't figure out how to touch type.

it's not well studied, and getting together large enough numbers of people to test with is challenging. Even more challenging is producing tasks to test people with that are actually somehow related to human movement in very day life, which is why in our lab we're building a variety of video games to try and tackle that challenge.

Bizarre excuse, Scientists have their ways of getting together large number of people for clinical trials (and physiotherapy trials).

Ok maybe sport movements trials is not as important as medicine trials but if you include the neurological study benefits maybe it would be as important.

Good insight though

Takes years of effort and several millions of dollars. I'm in the middle of one right now. It's much easier to get the resources together to tackle diseases/disabilities than to study normal learning in healthy people, especially across months or years. A lot of the work is done in the context of tackling a particular ailment. "We want to know why humans can kick soccer balls" is a pretty difficult sales pitch for funding, although some of the sports research institutes have interests in that area.

Neurology itself is very much a new and shifting field, which is why every year or two you have some new crazy theory of "how the brain works" or whatever. The problem domain itself is rapidly evolving, and a lot of these types of questions simply haven't been asked in a cogent, scientifically valid manner with clear testing approaches.

There's not zero work on the subject, just not a lot. And a good amount of it is built around rather primitive and synthetic motor tasks that have turned out not to be good proxies for the real world.

One: we have the innate ability to learn, cache, reuse, and adapt motions that we already know. (This is similar to the popular but bogus "muscle memory" concept. Other brain functions behave very similarly.)

So Muscle memory then.

That's not muscle memory. Muscle memory is pitching a baseball well, walking, playing a piece of music you've studied years, or your grandmother knitting a scarf while entirely enthralled in the television. Muscle memory is, or attempts, essentially perfect repetition. Learn, cache, reuse -- sure -- but adaptation plays no part in muscle memory.

Muscle memory of common sub-patterns can be leveraged though. Playing a piano or guitar is a good example, where chord shapes and hand placement become bonafide muscle memory, but at a higher level you're conscious brain is directing the sequence of motions explicitly -- at least until you've repeated it enough times that the whole thing becomes sub-conscious.

Muscle memory is very different from complex motions that require adaptation (that is, some level of planning stimulated by your senses).

Two things seem fairly clear. One: we have the innate ability to learn, cache, reuse, and adapt motions that we already know. (This is similar to the popular but bogus "muscle memory" concept. Other brain functions behave very similarly.) Two:

I gess that motion exprience memory, to more extent or a little less, is a dominant issue towards intentional body motion. Is this , a rather contradicting sentence, for me not well undestood, or, do you deny that if someone is learned some motion to perform an intentional task, he will do so even when if it is not appropriate? (for example a friend of mine always used to drive manual transsmision cars, crashed my automatic transsmision car, becouse he landed his left foot on break, thinking it is the clutch pedal - and- pressed gas pedal thinking it is a break - he pressed the gas pedal thus stronger than break pedal (assumed clutch pedal), meaning he crashed, not only burned breaks)

Two things seem fairly clear. One: we have the innate ability to learn, cache, reuse, and adapt motions that we already know. (This is similar to the popular but bogus "muscle memory" concept. Other brain functions behave very similarly.) Two:

I gess that motion exprience memory, to more extent or a little less, is a dominant issue towards intentional body motion. Is this , a rather contradicting sentence, for me not well undestood, or, do you deny that if someone is learned some motion to perform an intentional task, he will do so even when if it is not appropriate? (for example a friend of mine always used to drive manual transsmision cars, crashed my automatic transsmision car, becouse he landed his left foot on break, thinking it is the clutch pedal - and- pressed gas pedal thinking it is a break - he pressed the gas pedal thus stronger than break pedal (assumed clutch pedal), meaning he crashed, not only burned breaks)

Well for your example, in what way does "muscle memory" differ from "habit"? Obviously we have a type of memory for movements and if you want to call that muscle memory then sure, whatever. It's the literal concept of muscles having memory that is silly. These are just definition issues. Plus it's not totally clear exactly what the nature of some of these memories are or whether they're really repeated in any fully automated way or how similar the repeated motions are or how fluid the memories are.

Our normal memory for every day events is very fluid and easily changes. It seems unlikely that our memory for motions is terribly rigid or repeatable, for most people.

How does the human brain - on instinct mode - accomplish this... Just out of curiosity

Everyone who does a kick-around every now and then knows and can do this. No special talent required

(image just to remove ambiguity - as football is used in few other contexts)

A left footed person.

Has a football several yards ahead of him

He has to and aims to kick the ball with his left foot. kickTheBall2.jpg

As he runs towards the ball, his first 2(or 3) steps adjust minutely

then he runs fast (accelerating so steps are not evenly paced) and yet so sure to kick with his left foot and he confidently and ultimately does with a bang!

Getting his target foot without explicitly measuring the distance between him and the ball, and dividing by each step of his run, and the acceleration even complicates things, so that each run-step is not even the same! All this merely on instinct mode!

The taken-for-granted maths the brain does to accomplish this feat must be so extreme. And we don't feel mentally taxed! I can't think of any other thing like it (that doesn't fall within exceptional talent apart from the ability of a child to pick up a strange language almost immediately)

Don't tell me our brains evolved to doing so from... because no animals are known to kick footballs. Not a survival skill

Humans only started kicking balls in the 1800s (according to official records)

This time around Google search misunderstood me every time, whatever key words i used , so i find myself asking programmers a question i should be asking neuroscientists !!!

Curiosity killed the cat

a luck:)

what is the luck? I think coinsidences of neaurons in our brains:)

Is it DNA? Or parents? That is a question.